“I do,” said Clarence impatiently.

“And you still want to go?”

“Certainly,” replied Clarence, with a cold stare, taking up his oars.

The man shrugged his shoulders, bent himself for the stroke, and the boat sprung forward.  The others rowed strongly and rapidly, the tough ashen blades springing like steel from the water, the heavy boat seeming to leap in successive bounds until they were fairly beyond the curving inshore current and clearing the placid, misty surface of the bay.  Clarence did not speak, but bent abstractedly over his oar; the ferryman and his crew rowed in equal panting silence; a few startled ducks whirred before them, but dropped again to rest.  In half an hour they were at the Embarcadero.  The time was fairly up.  Clarence’s eyes were eagerly bent for the first appearance of the stage-coach around the little promontory; the ferryman was as eagerly scanning the bare, empty street of the still sleeping settlement.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” said the ferryman with a glance, half of astonishment and half of curiosity, at his solitary passenger.

“See whom?” asked Clarence carelessly, as he handed the man his promised fee.

“The other man I ferried over to catch the stage.  He must have gone on without waiting.  You’re in luck, young fellow!”

“I don’t understand you,” said Clarence impatiently.  “What has your previous passenger to do with me?”

“Well, I reckon you know best.  He’s the kind of man, gin’rally speaking, that other men, in a pow’ful hurry, don’t care to meet—­and, az a rule, don’t Foller arter.  It’s gin’rally the other way.”

“What do you mean?” inquired Clarence sternly.  “Of whom are you speaking?”

“The Chief of Police of San Francisco!”

CHAPTER II.

The laugh that instinctively broke from Clarence’s lips was so sincere and unaffected that the man was disconcerted, and at last joined in it, a little shamefacedly.  The grotesque blunder of being taken as a fugitive from justice relieved Clarence’s mind from its acute tension,—­he was momentarily diverted,—­and it was not until the boatman had departed, and he was again alone, that it seemed to have any collateral significance.  Then an uneasy recollection of Susy’s threat that she had the power to put his wife in Fort Alcatraz came across him.  Could she have already warned the municipal authorities and this man?  But he quickly remembered that any action from such a warning could only have been taken by the United States Marshal, and not by a civic official, and dismissed the idea.